Hey guys,
If you run Linux on a ThinkPad, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about: the built-in F1 and F4 mute lights are hardwired to the internal soundcard. The second you plug in a USB DAC or connect your Bluetooth headphones, the lights stop tracking your master volume and become totally useless.
I got too much free time, so I finally put together a background script to fix it and threw it up on GitHub.
Basically, it's a lightweight background listener for PipeWire. Instead of looking at the hardware, it looks at your global master volume and mic status, and forces the LEDs to stay perfectly synced no matter what audio device you're currently using.
Full disclosure: I leaned heavily on AI tools to help me figure out the logic and write the actual code. But it solved my problem flawlessly, so I packaged it up with a quick 1-line curl installer to share with the community.
🔗 https://github.com/putofixe67/thinkpad-led-sync
I'd love for some of you to test it out! Let me know if it works for your setup or if you run into any weird quirks.